A List Of Things Thrown Five Minutes Ago

LIFE IS ALWAYS A CABARET OLD CHUM: Am I the only one who thinks the whole "this musical closed five minutes ago, guess it's time to revive it" has gotten a little out of hand? This season, we had revivals of Les Mis and A Chorus Line, both of which are apparently such complete clones of the original that they're ineligible for a number of Tonys (direction, design) as a result, and we recently had a revival of Into The Woods less than 15 years after the original production had closed. That Roundabout will be reviving its Cabaret revival next season strikes me as the worst of both worlds. Not only is it a veritable carbon copy of the last production, but that production closed just over 3 years ago. The best revival I think I've seen on Broadway was the Deaf West version of Big River, which took a show and reinvented it, adding texture to it that wasn't there (hell, it arguably made a mediocre show good)--why can't we have more of that (and John Doyle's experimental Sondheim) and less cookie cutter crud.